Non-Newtonian Fluid Heat Transfer in Porous Media

Abstract

The chapter focuses on non-Newtonian-fluid heat transfer in porous media and reviews the existing literature, the number of citations in which has rapidly grown reaching a sizable number on the topic. The existing body of information covers most of the relevant Darcy and non-Darcy situations in boundary layer and confined flows. Heat transfer in porous media is of great pragmatic importance in a wide variety of scientific and engineering applications, as can be seen from some of the applications summarized in the chapter. The chapter presents pure Darcy natural-convection boundary-layer problem for flow past an isothermal vertical flat plate, a nonisothermal smooth surface of arbitrary shape, and a nonuniform horizontal flat plate embedded in a porous medium saturated with an Ostwald-de Waele power-law fluid. The problem of pure Darcy natural-convection boundary-layer flow past an isothermal vertical flat plate embedded in a porous medium saturated with a Herschel-Bulkley fluid—namely, a pseudoplastic fluid with yield stress is discussed. The problem of pure Darcy natural-convection boundary-layer flow past an isothermal vertical flat plate embedded in a porous medium saturated with an elastic Boger fluid with constant viscosity is discussed. The chapter presents pure Darcy mixed-convection boundary-layer problem for flow past an isothermal vertical flat plate and a nonisothermal smooth surface of arbitrary shape embedded in a porous medium saturated with an Ostwald-de Waele power-law fluid. The problem of pure Darcy mixed-convection boundary-layer flow past an isothermal vertical flat plate embedded in a porous medium saturated with an elastic Boger fluid with constant viscosity is presented. The chapter presents some more additional topics on steady-state convection. Nonsteady state convections based on pure Darcy regime are discussed.